The best way to avoid litigation is to assess and manage risk in advance. However, as simple as the legal duty of care appears to be – to behave as a “reasonable person under the same or similar circumstances” – it is often difficult for event professionals to know if they are addressing their reasonably foreseeable risks in a reasonable manner.
Steve Adelman brings his legal and event expertise to every aspect of risk assessment. He then applies that understanding to help event producers, venue operators, security providers, and equipment lessors mitigate the risks of their entertainment, sports, and corporate events.
Risk Management
Ideally, most risk management takes place well before event day. This is the time to identify the reasonably foreseeable hazards of an event, venue, or crowd, gather available resources, and create event safety and crowd management plans to mitigate the most foreseeable risk of harm to lives or property. These plans should be based on leading industry authorities such as NFPA 101, Life Safety Code, and ANSI ES1.9-2020, Crowd Management, whose principal author is Steve Adelman.
Using his lawyerly attention to detail and broad knowledge of event operations, Steve Adelman creates safety and security planning documents that are effective during an event and defensible afterwards.
Here is a short explanation of the duty to behave reasonably under one’s own circumstances.
Training
A line attributed to the boxer Mike Tyson is, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Even a comprehensive plan is only as good as its implementation. This is why Steve Adelman supplements his written safety plans by recording training videos that entertainingly empower staff and volunteers to think through their most foreseeable situations. He also leads in-person crowd manager and event security training that is compliant with applicable codes, standards, and reasonable industry practices.
Steve Adelman is well-versed in basic crowd psychology and demystifies often misused concepts such “situational awareness.” Applying his instructional experience as a law school professor and vice president of the Event Safety Alliance, he is able to calmly discuss even frightening subjects ranging from corporate depositions to active shooter training.